To:THE EDITORIAL BOARD OFZA PRAVDU

Written:Written between November 2 and 7, 1913Published:First published inPravdaNo. 123, May 5, 1932.

      Sent from Cracow to St. Petersburg.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages115-116.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Tothe Editor

Forthe Editorial Board

DearColleagues,

Welcomingthe excellent beginning of the struggle by
the six deputies for proper respect of the will of the majority
of the workers, and the excellent campaign of your
paper,[1]I would ask you also to take notice of the following:

Ifthe Seven begin impudently proclaimingthemselvesthe Social-Democratic group (as they have done at, the end
of their article in
No. 60[2]). then the Six must without
fail declare calmly, briefly and firmly: “We are the
Social-Democratic Labour group, since we act in keeping with the
will of the majority of the class-conscious workers, put it
into effect and represent the majority. The seven non-Party
deputies have not refuted a single fact, a single figure,
out of the mass quoted in our paper and demonstrating this
truth. Here is our address; write to us, worker comrades,
and do not imagine that we shall insult you by thinking
you capable of believing the theory that ‘seven deputies are
higher than the Party, higher than the will of the majority
of the workers’. Even 77 deputies could not be higher than
that will. We are strictly fulfilling it.”

Sucha brief declaration is essential. Then you should
send a formal statement to Senior Conventus (i.e., to the
State Duma).Thenthe Seven will very rapidly, at, once
lose their arrogance: very, very rapidly they willagreeto equality (whichallof them have recognised in writing).Neithertheynoranyone else will have any other way out.
Once you have begun a job, you can’t back out. The
Six have made asplendidbeginning, and their victory isassured, ifthey carry oncorrectly—in a week or two their
victory is inevitable.

Bestgreetings and wishes,V. I.

[1]InOctober 1913Za Pravdupublished a statement by the
Bolshevik deputies (the Six) demanding that the Menshevik section of the
Social-Democratic group in the Fourth Duma (the Seven) should recognise the
equality of the Six and the Seven to decide all questions in the
Social-Democratic group in the Duma. In the same month the Bolshevik
deputies announced inZa Pravduthe refusal of the Menshevik
liquidators to acknowledge the equality of the Six and the Seven in the
group and stated that it was necessary to form an independent Bolshevik
workers’ group in the Duma.

[2]Leninrefers to the article “A Threat to the Unity of the
Social-Democratic Group”, which was published in the liquidators’Novaya Rabochaya GazetaNo. 60, October 18, 1913.